The Skeptical and Pragmatic Interpretations

In practice, the result is that when Nietzsche writes things like “the biggest fable of all is the fable of knowledge” (The Will to Power 555); “delusion and error are con-ditions of human knowledge and sensation” (GS 107); “there are no eternal facts, nor are there any absolute truths” (Human, All Too Human 2), or when he repeatedly hammers against the sensibility of Kantian things-in-themselves that could be the objects of knowledge, as he does in the fourth chapter of Twilight of the Idols, many readers assume that he is an epistemological skeptic.

Babette Babich, for example, writes, “Nietzsche contends that knowledge  — even as a limited perspective — is impossible” (Babich 1994, 80). R.J. Hollingdale concurs. He claims that according to Nietzsche, “[i]n the sense in which philoso-phers are accustomed to use the word … there is no knowledge” (Hollingdale 1973, 131). Jean Granier also agrees that for Nietzsche “the traditional concept of knowl-edge appears as a pseudo-concept” (Granier 1977, 192). Alan Schrift thinks that Nietzsche rejects epistemology entirely as a result of his skepticism: “[he] does not provide a theory at all; it is a rhetorical strategy that offers an alternative to the tra-ditional epistemological conception of knowledge as the possession of some stable, eternal ‘entities’, whether these be considered ‘truths’, ‘facts’, ‘meanings’, ‘propo-sitions’, or whatever …. Nietzsche views these ‘entities’ as beyond the limits of human comprehension, and … he concludes that we are surely incapable of ‘know-ing’ them” (Schrift 1990, 145). Peter Poellner sees Nietzsche as part of a Cartesian skeptical tradition, where “even if we were able to rationally justify a thought … we would have no good reason to regard it as true” (Poellner 1995, 63). Willard Mittelman sums up the skeptical interpretation: “for Nietzsche knowledge of the world is impossible” (Mittelman 1984, 8).

2 As Socrates asked Theaetetus, “do you fancy it is a small matter to discover the nature of knowl-edge? Is it not one of the hardest questions?” Theaetetus 148.c.

Jessica Berry offers a subtle analysis of Nietzsche as belonging to the Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition, something quite distinct from the more common readings of him as a Cartesian skeptic. For ancient skeptics like Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus, the peace of mind they termed ataraxia was to be achieved through suspending judgment about everything that is less than self-evident. Arguments can be mounted for and against any propositions, making them uncertain and inconclusive, leaving the inquirer indefinitely indecisive and unsure what to believe. For the Pyrrhonian skeptic, that is the proper frame of mind. Berry holds that Nietzsche’s perspectivism is primarily epistemic  — he recognizes a variety of perspectives as equipollent, which leads to the Pyrrhonian suspension of judgment and a rejection of dogmatic views that take one perspective as superior to another. Perspectivism as a doctrine or positive position of any kind would be just another sort of dogmatism on her reading (Berry 2011, chapter 4).

It is puzzling that those who regard Nietzsche as a skeptic not only skip over his criticisms of skepticism, but somehow miss the occasions when he walks his more extreme claims about knowledge back. In BGE 208 Nietzsche remarks that “when a philosopher suggests these days that he is not a skeptic … everybody is annoyed”.

Why are they annoyed? Is it because skepticism is so clearly right that only retro-grade, dogmatic troglodytes still claim to have knowledge? No, skeptics are “deli-cate” and “timid”; they suffer from “nervous exhaustion” and “sickliness.”

Skepticism, Nietzsche claims, is a fashionable decadence, a soporific sedative;

“entertaining no hypotheses at all might well be part of good taste”. In other words, the rejection of skepticism is a social faux pas in fashionably effete circles, whereas the claim of knowledge — that is dangerous, an explosive rumbling in the distance.

In the same section Nietzsche equates objective knowledge with dressed-up skepti-cism, which he regards as mere epistemic trendiness. But he is not dismissing knowledge; in the same breath that he denounces skepticism, Nietzsche rejects absolutism as a kindred crime. Skepticism and absolutism are opposite sides of the same devalued coin.

Nietzsche does not sentence knowledge — in some sense of the term — to the gallows. Consider that “no honey is sweeter than that of knowledge” (HATH 292) and his assertion that “whoever seriously wants to become free … his will desires nothing more urgently than knowledge and the means to it — that is, the enduring condition in which he is best able to engage in knowledge” (HATH 288). He also connects knowledge with both pleasure and happiness: “Why is knowledge, the ele-ment of researchers and philosophers, linked to pleasure? First and foremost, because by it we gain awareness of our power … Second, because, as we gain knowledge, we surpass older ideas and their representatives, become victors, or at least believe ourselves to be. Third, because any new knowledge, however small, makes us feel superior to everyone and unique in understanding this matter cor-rectly” (HATH 252). Likewise, happiness is positively undesirable without knowl-edge: “our drive for knowledge has become too strong for us to be able to want happiness without knowledge … Knowledge has in us been transformed into a pas-sion which shrinks at no sacrifice and at bottom fears nothing but its own extinc-tion” (Daybreak 429). Nor is the happiness provided by knowledge cheap or

ephemeral: rather, “the happiness of the man of knowledge enhances the beauty of the world and makes all that exists sunnier; knowledge casts its beauty not only over things but in the long run into things …” (D 550).

The quotations in the preceding paragraph are from Human, All Too Human and Daybreak, two of Nietzsche’s earlier works, and those enamored of the idea that Nietzsche’s thought progressed through distinct phases (like Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter) might be inclined to regard those passages as examples of an early,

“positivistic” phase, rather than of his mature thinking. It is true that Nietzsche did change his mind about some topics. Richard Wagner is the most obvious, where the hagiography of The Birth of Tragedy gave way to the vitriol of Nietzsche Contra Wagner and The Case of Wagner. However, a close examination of Nietzsche’s writ-ings from throughout his life demonstrates that he displays continuing respect for knowledge. Even in The Gay Science, the source of much of Nietzsche’s epistemo-logical critique, he characterizes himself as a lover of knowledge (GS 14), a seeker of knowledge (GS 380), and as someone greedy for knowledge (GS 242, 249). The most famous announcement of The Gay Science, the death of God, is taken to be a welcome epistemic harbinger; now that God is dead, “all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never been such an ‘open sea’” (GS 343). Nietzsche is clear in The Gay Science (§324) that this is cause for rejoicing: “and knowledge itself … for me it is a world of dangers and victories in which heroic feelings, too, find places to dance and play.

‘Life as a means to knowledge’ — with this principle in one’s heart one can live not only boldly but even gaily, and laugh gaily too.”

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra one finds Zarathustra saying “With knowledge the body purifies itself; making experiments with knowledge it elevates itself; in the lover of knowledge all instincts become holy; in the elevated, the soul becomes gay”

(Z I:22.2). In the first section of the preface to On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche writes that the treasure for “we men of knowledge” is “where the beehives of knowl-edge are”. This sort of praise for knowlknowl-edge continued to the end of his productive life. In The Antichrist (48, see also 49) he criticizes Christianity on the grounds that it opposes science and knowledge, characterizing knowledge as “emancipation from the priest”; and in Ecce Homo (“The Birth of Tragedy”: 2) he writes,

“Knowledge, saying Yes to reality, is just as necessary for the strong as cowardice and the flight from reality — as the ‘ideal’ is for the weak, who are inspired by weakness”.

So Nietzsche has some kind of positive attitude towards and program regarding knowledge and a program. But what is it? Beyond Good and Evil opens with him questioning the value of truth, and why its pursuit should be seen as the highest value. “Knowledge for its own sake” is a form of unexamined moralizing (BGE 63).

Nietzsche often writes about the practicality of beliefs as a distinct virtue from their truth. Consider The Gay Science 354: “we simply lack any organ for knowledge, for

‘truth’: we ‘know’ (or believe or imagine) just as much as may be useful in the inter-ests of the human herd, the species …”. In the same passage, Nietzsche goes so far as to speculate about conditions in which we would be so severely mistaken about what is useful for us that it would cause human extinction. In The Will to Power (493)

he writes that “truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live”, and suggests in WP (515) that our goal is “not ‘to know’ but to schema-tize — to impose upon chaos as much regularity and form as our practical needs require”. In BGE 4 he writes, “the falseness of a judgment is for us not necessarily an objection … the question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species- preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating”. We need to recognize untruth as a condition of life (BGE 4).

It is not surprising that these sorts of passages led some interpreters to conclude that Nietzsche was a pragmatist, where knowledge just consists in accepting those doctrines that are helpful or productive for our lives. Arthur Danto led the way, writ-ing “Nietzsche … advanced a pragmatic criterion of truth” (Danto 1965, 72), and he was followed by Reudiger Grimm, who writes, “the criterion to be met by any of these perspectival ‘errors’ [that Nietzsche discusses] is not one of veracity, but rather one of utility. In point of usefulness there is a great deal of difference between interpretations …” (Grimm 1977, 70). More recently, Tsarina Doyle interprets Nietzsche as defending internal realism, a view that Hilary Putnam regarded as the heir to the American pragmatist tradition (Doyle 2009, chapter 2). Neil Sinhababu is even more explicit: “Nietzschean pragmatism is the view that one should believe whatever best promotes life, even things that are untrue …” (Sinhababu 2017, 56).